"Building something we can't stop" is one of my nightmare scenarios for bitcoin. Imagine we're all wrong about what it is, and bitcoin becomes some kind of monetary black hole/grey goo that sucks up all productive activity until nothing else matters except computing sha256. Kind of like the runaway paper clip maximization AI.

Is bitcoin the great filter? If it is, could we stop it even if we all wanted to?

I could see a sci fi story where bitcoin is a kind of "psychic bomb" that alien civilizations use to collapse primitive, but growing civilizations. Once they develop the internet, they can push the information out anonymously until it reaches escape velocity with the natives.

I say all this as a major bitcoin maxi.